When the Washington Post feels compelled to run an AP story about a raucous college party, that story bears discussion.

But before I so much as convey my understanding of the situation, I should preface this by noting that I was about 3,000 miles away from the Bates campus in beautiful Portland, Oregon (where I'm still sitting) when the Incident took place. As such, most of what I know comes from secondhand accounts, so take my summary of events with a grain of salt.

That out of the way, I'll start with a little background.

Most seniors at Bates participate in something called "Senior Week," a collection of outings and happenings designed to celebrate students' imminent graduation in the week preceding commencement. This includes a variety of mostly good spirited — though not necessarily wholesome — activities, such as a barbecue and a pub crawl. It also includes an event I'll call "Revisit Your First Dorm Room," in which, on one night in their ultimate week at college, fourth year students pay a visit to the first year occupants of their first college dorm rooms.

This academic year the graduating Class of 2010 held "Revisit Your First Dorm Room" last night, on 25 May 2010. Apparently this year's celebration — for want of a better term — was more raucous than usual. (NB: "Revisit Your First Dorm Room" is also a convenient way for older students to provide those under the legal drinking age with ethanol.) So raucous in fact that, in order to extricate an overzealous partier for medical care, the college's private security team felt compelled to call in the local police department, who ultimately arrested 11 students.

The Incident has ruffled many students' feathers. Many of my peers feel the local police force could have used gentler methods in their bid to give medical personnel the access they needed and to otherwise restore a modicum of order. I've already received a dozen or so invitations to join various groups and events in re the Incident on Facebook, despite my relatively anemic presence on the social networking site, and indeed a group organized a "Protest Against Police Brutality" on the main quad that took place earlier today.

From what I've read and seen, it does seem clear that the local police could have handled the Incident with more finesse. The amateur videos I've watched point to a certain degree of contempt for students on the part of the police.

Yet this is as much a story about shirked responsibility as it is about police ineptitude.

I and all of my fellow students are among an almost incalculably privileged group. Not only do we live in one of the most stable, prosperous nations on earth, we attend one of the most élite tertiary schools in the world. Moreover, most of us come from extremely privileged backgrounds, both in the context of the world and the more immediate "first world" context where we spend most of our time. As such, I feel we have a responsibility to live up to the extraordinary opportunities we've been given.

Which is not to say we need to become ascetics or take vows of eternal poverty. I probably spent more today at Whole Foods buying a few bits and bobs for dinner than many people earn in a week.

But when some among us escalate a fête to the point that a police officer sustains a fracture in the course of restoring enough order to extricate an over intoxicated peer, those involved ought to accept that they could have acted with more grace as well.

In particular, this sentiment that students were the victims of some horrible example of police brutality seems to me insulting to the people far less fortunate than us who have suffered at the hands of true police brutality. While I don't have a whole lot of facts at my disposal, that I haven't heard any reports of students being taken to hospital in critical condition or with multiple compound fractures suggests to me no one was. At least in my book, a couple of scrapes inflicted in the course of imposing compliance, while obviously something to be avoided, does not compare with the more gruesome fates of others in their interactions with law enforcement.

As mentioned earlier, I don't have all the facts by any stretch of the imagination. But the public perception of the Incident — I was just informed this story made the front page of the Huffington Post — is hardly what I want people to associate with my degree. It would go a long way to improve the optics of the situation, and my own feelings about my peers, if they acted with a hint more humility.